Moving swiftly on (trying to get to the actually good stuff at some point) next up is annoying moe girls, abusive shoujo relationships and naked man butt goes to VN school………Sora no Method, Ookami Shoujo to Kuro Ouji and Grisaia no Kajitsu.

Sora no Method (Celestial Method)

I only watched this a few hours ago and I already forget most of it. To be fair not a whole lot actually happens – girl moves back to a town with her dad after her mum dies to find mysterious blue haired loli weirdly excited to see her & a strange glittery disc floating in the sky. There’s plenty of attempts at creating a mysterious atmosphere, but I just didn’t care enough to really get into it – I really don’t like squeaky moe girls. Think this is going to be similar to Natsuiro Kiseki though and I didn’t last long with it either.

I can’t say I’m overly fond of the character designs – the giant heads and super thin arms & legs make everyone look like stickmen to me………stickmen with giant creepy eyes. The animation is pretty serviceable although the ED is probably the best animated thing about the show. Just not my thing – dropped.

Ookami Shoujo to Kuro Ouji (Wolf Girl & Black Prince)

It took me quite a lot of will power to finish this episode – all the main characters are entirely unlikeable! Here we have a vain, try-hard girl lying through her teeth about a fake boyfriend and a sadistic pretty-boy who takes advantage of her stupidity and desperation…….I just don’t get the appeal here. It really confuses me why trashy shoujo series like this insist on depicting teenage girls as horrible, bitchy entities that backstab each other constantly – that isn’t really a positive thing to be saying about your core demographic! The message that you should change yourself and/or lie about yourself to gain acceptance with the crowd is just a terrible, toxic message that shouldn’t get any attention, yet that is exactly what our main character here is doing.

The depressing thing here is that you already know how the show is going to proceed. Mr Sadistic will drag our dumb heroine around by the nose and force her to do degrading things for his own entertainment, occasionally saving her idiotic arse from generic troubles, and that will blossom into “he actually loves her!” by the end. There – now we don’t have to watch the show! Urgh, have so leant my lesson from last season’s Ao Haru Ride – dropped.

Grisaia no Kajitsu (La Fruit de la Grisaia)

As far as VN harem adaptations go, this wasn’t actually all that terrible. That is mostly due to the fact the main dude seems to be channelling Sagara Sousuke from Full Metal Panic most of the time with his weird “I am a normal high school student” act, when he is clearly some sort of super-soldier with no real clue about normal human interaction! Kind of reminds me of Tatsuya from Mahouka too, just as deadpan but slightly less obnoxious.

But yeah, the majority of the episode doesn’t really reach outside of the VN adaptation box – it still has our main dude wander about the school & dorm having random one-on-one encounters with the haremettes (and getting a good look at their underwear). The girls themselves adhere to the usual stereotypes, with the twist being that they all seem to have some darker hidden secret that has landed them a place at this isolated boarding school. If harems are your thing Grisaia is probably the best choice of the season so far – I might give it another episode.